Weather: Still too bloody warm for November. Upper 60s & rainy.But the leaves are GORGEOUS!
Wordcount jumped a bit today. Was able to sketch out some notes at the day job and at least have a target to shoot at.
Wendig posted a great blog a few days ago about how the “Horror” tag was not hardly used anymore, at least not in fiction. I know I run into this problem frequently when people ask me what I write. It would probably fall under horror in a different time, but people have a specific thing in mind when you say that. They expect to be scared, and let’s face it, not much scares people in fiction these days. People get “disturbed” or “creeped out” but rarely good and proper scared.
Most of what I write is comparable to Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files series (At least in the type of World Building I’m doing, not in comparison of quality. Love me some Harry Dresden!) So technically my stories would be classified as Urban Fantasy. But there are some who would point to the fact that they have sex in them, so maybe they’d be better served under the Paranormal Romance heading. (Not so much.I have way too much bloody gore and body horror in there.) There’s enough mythological substrate, that it could fall under elements of Fantasy. Or I could just play coy as some people have advised and say I write Fiction, but that is not helpful in describing the tone of the books. So Urban Fantasy it is, at least for now.
Genre is always a tough one to sort, because so many sub-genre’s have sprung up with really specific parameters and themes. It can get pigeon-holey and box you in pretty quickly and get your book dismissed by people who might otherwise enjoy your story, but are turned off for whatever reason by the genre it’s stuck in.
I guarantee there are a large swath of people who would never have known about Game of Thrones because the books are categorized as Fantasy, but who are diehard fans of the show. Not because the show is better or worse than the books, but because the show is marketed as something other than a fantasy show. It’s very much a drama with fantasy elements. That’s easier for some non-fantasy fans to engage with than the opposite.
Here’s the link to Chuck’s post because he makes some very good points about how we view genres. Why Is Horror so Anathema in Publishing?
Off to watch the last few innings of the World Series, because I lived just outside Chicago most of my life and I need to see History happen. 😀 (GO CUBS!)
Nevermoreland 